Barney Rock says his son Dean’s excellent cameo in Sunday’s League final will give his confidence a welcome shot in the arm.

Rock’s two points late on in the game after replacing an out-of-sorts Bernard Brogan were critical to the outcome as the Dubs held off Tyrone for a one-point win.

Rock Senior, an All-Ireland medal winner in 1983 and a league medallist four years later, said: “I’ve no doubt he was itching to get in and he would have seen Jason Whelan in before him but he is level-headed enough.

“He knows as well as anyone it is not just a 15-man game, it is a 20-man game because Dublin use five subs no matter what.

“But I’d say he was looking at the watch and thinking it wasn’t going to be him because he was the last sub on with 12 minutes to go but it’s a situation that he has got to keep working hard and keep doing it.

“It will give him the confidence to say he has moved up the pecking order.

“But Dean knows just because he got on and scored two points the last day it doesn’t mean he is going to start. He would love to start but there are no guarantees whatsoever.”

Having struggled to nail down a place in the Championship panel in recent years however, Rock should at least be safe in assuming that he will be involved this summer.

“There were three years where he was just waiting to get into the panel and it just didn’t happen for him.

"After the under-21s that time in 2010 he might have got in but in 2011 he pulled a hamstring severely, pulled it off the bone so that knocked him out for the whole year. Then last year he was just let go before the Championship.”

Rock added that getting to the last eight of the Championship, where the real action starts, is all-important for Dublin now.

“I think the important thing for Dublin would be to get themselves to the quarter-final. I’m sure Jim Gavin is an ambitious man, and his selectors.